HUNTER NOT ALONE IN RITE OF PASSAGE

The first time you point that shotgun at an escaping bird, strange tremors afflict mind and body.

The brain is paralyzed by a roar of tension, and hands quiver in a stiffly rooted stump of a body. You don't remember having legs and feet. You lose all ability to feel.

Deer hunters call it "buck fever." No matter how long and avidly you prepare for that instant, the first bead you draw on a living creature becomes an engulfing moment. Whether The brain is paralyzed by a roar of tension, and hands quiver in a stiffly rooted stump of a body. You don't remember having legs and feet. You lose all ability to feel.

you kill the animal or nervously miss, you endure a passage that unites you with the timeless millions of other hunters who also made that seminal decision.

Half a dozen kids were with their dads last week at Turkey Trot Rod & Gun, and two had shot pheasants before. Most still were hoping to put a first bird into the gamebag.

Now, it isn't easy to shoot a flying bird of any sort, but it's especially tough to nail one that thunders from the grass a few feet behind you, stopping heart and freezing blood. You must turn and let your careful training overpower any sense of panic, while allowing instincts to dominate.

You must identify the bird, raise the gun, make sure no one is in the way, flick off the safety, point the gun while calculating the bird's flight speed and direction, then squeeze, all within a second or two. A kid-even an adult-may need a year or three to make a first kill.

Although they may not realize it at the time, many rookies get help from their partners. When I first began banging holes in the sky, I noticed many birds fell on my second shot. By then, of course, others had begun shooting. I always was warmly complimented for my shooting, even though any one of two or three loads might have downed the bird. "Oh, well, maybe I did hit it," I would think.

Bob Specht of Hawthorn Woods, whose 11-year-old Tony cleanly bagged his first bird on Sunday, remembered hearing compliments like that for a couple of years after he took up bird hunting. When Specht finally became incredulous, a friend explained a simple truth of convivial hunting parties: "You see, it doesn't matter which of us actually shoots the bird, only that we take the bird."

It was in this light that John Seyman, the fine bird caller and dog expert from Naperville, found himself in the field with a pair of his friends' sons. Everyone else was in the farmhouse gulping venison chili and black bear barbeque for lunch, but John had wanted these boys to have a private chance at a shot beyond the gaze of parental pressure.

Sure enough, the dog put up a pheasant-a game-farm hen-and one of the kids winged it. As wounded birds sometimes do, it landed on a high limb of a tree and stayed put.

"If this had been a wild bird, I would have let it go," Seyman later rationalized. "But this was a pen-reared bird with no chance for survival. It was meat on the hoof and was going to die anyway. The question was whether we should take it home or leave it to a fox or hawk."

Seyman lined up the kids. The older boy, who already had killed birds, was appointed backup shooter. He was told to be ready to shoot the bird if it made any effort to fly.

The younger boy was given the honor, and he faced his moment of truth with throbbing excitement and immense determination. Seyman aligned him with the side of a tree so some pellets would make a clean shot. He told the boy to shoot when ready.

The boy took a quavering aim, and Seyman saw the grayish blob of a pattern of pellets miss the bird high by a foot.

"That bird didn't move," he said. "It just sat there in a daze, looking around."

The second shot was closer, but 6 inches low, and still the bird dully sat in the tree. Seyman saw the boy begin to doubt his ability.

"Now, just relax and try one more time," he breathed.

The boy raised his gun. One loud report echoed through the edge of the woods, and the stricken pheasant fell to the ground. The dog retrieved, and the bird was placed in the proud boy's eager hands.

"That was a very nice shot," he was told.

I later asked Seyman how he timed his own shot so well that the boy never heard it.

"Well," Seyman said, biting a lip. "I knew how long he took to shoot the first two times, and I just gambled that he'd time it exactly that way again.

"Well, he did. Sometimes you just get lucky. And, of course, who's to say we both didn't hit it, anyway?"

As of now, I'd say the kid is going to become a very capable shot. All any shooter needs to relax, of course, is a little bit of confidence.